The Michael Jackson Tapes (7 page)

With the world press extolling his speech at Oxford and with his life making strides toward normalcy, things were looking up. Michael came
with me to synagogue and regularly attended Shabbat dinner. He seemed directed and content. He listened to what was being planned and what the purpose was, and he'd agree.

There were also simple times when I witnessed Michael's extremely moving acts of humility and kindness. A neighborhood friend asked me if he could bring his thirty-something brother with Down syndrome to meet Michael. Michael was one of his idols and the brother could even do the moon walk. Michael was focused on finishing his album but told me he could do a short meeting. The man arrived and sang some of Michael's songs for us, did the moon walk, and in general imitated Michael on stage. Michael could not have been kinder to this special man with special needs.

After the man departed with his family I thanked Michael for his kindness. “You did a very beautiful thing today,” I said. “I am truly grateful.”

“No Shmuley,” he replied. “You did me a favor by bringing him. I so enjoyed his company. I'm jealous of him.”

“Why would you say that, Michael?”

“Because he will never grow up. He will remain forever young and innocent. I envy him.”

There were many stories like these, special acts of kindness granted by a soft and gentle human being who had a soft and gentle heart.

As Michael become more motivated, energetic, and visible, those who had written him off suddenly started showing up again. You could see them saying to themselves: He's going places again. People who had been at their wits ends with his lack of productivity were ready to start making things happen. Managers and producers whom he had not heard from in quite a while were now visiting him in his hotel suite. The direct result was that my influence with Michael was now waning and he was slipping—missing meetings, not keeping regular hours, not showing his commitment, cringing and sinking into himself if I asked him about something to do with advancing our project to prioritize kids in the lives of parents. There was a growing tension between us. He started to disregard my advice to stay the course of the program we had
devised on his birthday. And rather than being supported, I was being undermined by the people around him who accused me of diminishing Michael's star power.

I heard later that Michael had been introduced to concert promoter David Guest (best known for marrying Liza Minelli and the messy lawsuits that followed) on a trip to meet Shirley Temple Black. David started saying to Michael that they should do a concert together to mark his thirtieth year as a performer. Michael was afraid to tell me because he knew I would oppose the idea until he'd found a sense of spiritual renewal. I'd tell him: Don't go back half-baked. It killed you the first time; don't do it the second time.

Of course I knew some meetings were going on, but what I didn't know, and learned a few months later from Michael's parents at their home in Encino, was that some in Michael's professional team had started telling Michael that I was demystifying him and making him too available. The attitude was that the rabbi is well-intentioned, but he is cheapening your brand by getting you to do free lectures at places like universities when your real place is in front of hundreds of thousands of paying fans in stadiums.

During this time the British journalist Martin Bashir had his office call me as an intermediary about a possible documentary on Michael because one of the producers he worked with knew me from my years as rabbi at Oxford University. I told Michael it would be a disastrous mistake. “Don't even think of doing this documentary,” I warned. “First, your life is not yet ready to be opened to scrutiny. Second, you don't need to be more famous and invite cameras into your life. You need to heal and to become more credible.”

I didn't even bother calling Bashir's people back and thought the project was dead. Two years later, our mutual friend Uri Geller would persuade Michael to do the Bashir project, which would be aired in 2003 under the title
Living with Michael Jackson.
It would prove to be one of the single greatest catastrophes ever to befall him. Michael's comments about “sleeping with children” would be seen by millions worldwide and would lead directly to his arrest on charges of child molestation.

Uri and I remain good friends and I know he cared for Michael deeply. I never would have met Michael if it weren't for Uri. And it was
for this reason that I made a point of showing constant gratitude by including Uri in everything that Michael and I did together, including and especially our trip to the UK for the Oxford lecture, where Uri joined Michael and me on the stage at the Oxford Union. I honored Uri's request to bring Michael to Uri's wedding as best man, and as Uri's rabbi I myself was honored to be asked to perform the wedding. Uri is one of the warmest and most loving people I know. But even with the best of intentions, his arranging for Michael to do the Bashir documentary was tragically misguided and catastrophic.

Michael's life was a complete mess. He was a celebrity spendthrift who had an as-yet unexplained relationship to children. Additionally, his many fears for their safety compelled him to hide his children behind veils. He had little communication with the normal, everyday, outside world, let alone his own family, and was desperately in need of healing in virtually every aspect of his life. Amid promising me that he would never again be alone with children, clearly this was a practice Michael was continuing, at least with Gavin, the boy we had met at Neverland. Michael desperately needed spiritual guidance and moral direction, not another camera crew. Never in my life have I seen a single TV program so completely polish off a man's future as did
Living with Michael Jackson,
which is not to fault Bashir and the people who made the documentary but rather Michael and his team for ever agreeing. It was most unfortunate that people who cared so deeply for Michael advised him so poorly.

As Michael moved back into his identity as a star, he became more secretive and secluded from me. For example, he had promised me that he would never again have plastic surgery. Yet I was told by people in his circle that he had had another procedure that he hid from me. It was partly out of embarrassment—he was ashamed to show me that he was not strong enough to keep to our goals and plan for him—and partly because, by now, he could not suffer my criticisms, which increased with time. Most significantly, whereas before he looked to me as a trusted guide and loving friend, he was now treating me as an irritant.

As I saw him falter—wake up late, miss meetings, spend money he didn't have—I began to offer ever-increasing rebukes. They were offered gently and lovingly, but they were rebukes nonetheless, and Michael had absolutely no idea how to handle them.

The day of our last planned event was March 25th. It was a community-based literacy and health initiative in Newark, New Jersey, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back. My dear friend Cory Booker was our partner in the event. At the time he was a councilman and today is the mayor of Newark and one of America's most admired, accomplished, and inspirational leaders. Although an African-American non-Jew, Cory was president of my student organization, the Oxford L'Chaim Society, when he was a Rhodes Scholar at the university. He is one of the most special, loving, and uplifting human beings I had ever met, and together at Oxford we hosted great world leaders, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, to lecture to our students on values-based themes.

Cory and I continue to be like brothers and Michael had met Cory several times at our home for the Friday night Sabbath dinner. Michael immediately saw in Cory what I had seen all those years before and many times commented to me how inspired he was by my soul-friendship with Cory. Michael agreed to distribute children's books to parents in Cory's ward of Newark. It was to be a beautiful opportunity to highlight the importance of reading children a bedtime story.

But by the time we actually went to Newark, Michael was already getting weary and wary of all the events he had to show up for—it had been a whirlwind six weeks of being in the public eye in an entirely unfamiliar role. I knew we were on our way out. He seemed to be slowly leaving the work we had launched together. He was going back to being a superstar.

The event at Newark with Councilman Booker was a huge success and hundreds of families were in attendance. We distributed thousands of books. But on the way back to his van, Michael barely spoke to me. I could tell he was angry. Always the gentleman, Michael never showed overt hostility and I never once witnessed him lose his temper. Rather, if he was annoyed he would simply withdraw. He would punish you by taking away the one thing that meant the most to him: attention.

We arrived back at Michael's hotel suite and I underwent one of the most painful experiences in my friendship with Michael. One of Michael's principal managers sat me down, with Michael looking on, and began explaining to me why Michael was upset. “Yes, Shmuley, Michael loves you but he is annoyed. You just don't get it.” Carnegie
Hall and Oxford were one thing. But a bunch of families in Newark? Michael is the biggest star in the world. He doesn't do things like that. A councilman in a small New Jersey city? Michael is around presidents and prime ministers. I was debasing his fame, abusing his celebrity.

Then the manager said something to me that I shall never, for the rest of my days, forget: “You want to make Michael normal. What you don't understand is that he's famous because he's
not
normal.”

Michael was silent as he listened. Clearly he had found someone to do his dirty work. This was a planned and sanctioned speech. So there it was. Two sides of Michael Jackson, forever in conflict, forever at war. The normal, cute, adorable child from Gary, Indiana, who just wanted to sing and make people happy versus the reclusive superstar who was prepared to walk with a giraffe, befriend a chimp, mask his face, and disfigure his countenance, all in an effort to be mysterious and aloof so the public would never stop focusing on him.

I pondered the words.
He is famous because he's not normal.
And in that statement I saw the full tragedy of Michael's life. Here was a man so bereft of love, so dependent on attention, that he would do almost anything to get it. If it meant becoming the world's biggest freak show, he would pay that price too. The public's opinion of him be damned. Just so long as they were still talking about him.

When I took him to Newark, New Jersey, to give out books to parents from low-income households to read to their children, I did so in the belief that he was more interested in doing good with his celebrity than pursuing fame. But the superstar had won out. The wholesome boy had been buried alive. And a superstar doesn't do mundane things like distribute books to a bunch of nobodies. And he doesn't do so for a mere councilman who is trying so hard to improve the lives of working families. (What a tragic irony to see all these years later that Michael is now sadly no longer alive and Cory Booker is hailed today as one of America's most accomplished mayors and is being spoken of in many circles as destined for national leadership).

So our relationship slowly unraveled and I finally decided that it was time to call it quits. I was there to help Michael improve his life and consecrate his celebrity to a cause larger than himself. If he could not sustain the effort, if I was to be told he only involves himself with
causes that behooved his fame, if I was expected to become another silent hanger-on, I was going to
move
on. I left Michael's hotel knowing that in all likelihood we would never be close again. That the right thing to do when one could no longer assist someone in crisis was at the very least not to bless his decline by sitting and watching in complacent silence.

It was the last time I saw Michael.

Two weeks later Michael called from Miami. He said, “I'm sending a plane for you” and then he spent a half hour on the phone trying to get me to come, telling me he still wanted to do our work together. He blamed our rift on the people who surrounded him. I felt the tug. Plus, I was raised in Miami and still had family there I could visit at the same time. I said I would think about it, and I did. But ultimately, I decided not to go. If Michael was serious about rededicating himself to the work we had begun, it would manifest itself through tangible action rather than empty words.

I waited for him to return to New York, but time went on and the announcement was made for two thirtieth anniversary concerts at Madison Square Garden that were to take place in September.

I was disappointed in Michael. I felt he had misrepresented himself to me and misrepresented himself to the world. He made me believe that his first priority was to help the world's children and live a life of unequalled altruism. And while he may have believed that, in reality Michael could never fully overcome the gravitational pull of superstardom. More than anything else, Michael misrepresented himself to himself. He had two sides, the giver and the narcissist, but was blind to the latter.

My relationship with Michael wasn't quite finished, however. Summer came and my family was together on an RV trip. Frank called and said, “Michael asked me to call you. We can't do the concert without you. You're his closest friend, Shmuley. He wants you and the kids to be there. It just wouldn't be the same otherwise.” I pulled off the highway to talk it over with my wife. I knew I had to decide right then and there. Thank God my wife was there. I wasn't sure I had the power to resist the magnetic attraction of a superstar. My wife, who is the most wholesome person I know and who has a complete immunity to all
things involving fame and celebrity, helped me over the mountain and I decided that I would decline.